#because even if i die i will still through sheer will alone haunt that hill and protect it MY LOVE WILL NEVER DIE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spookyspaghettisundae · 4 years

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Out of Control

The world passed by in a blur. Trees sped along outside the windows of the car. The engine roared like a dragon and the vehicle’s driver felt an unnatural fuel and fire in her veins.

A blood-red rising sun reflected off of her shades, glossy and shiny and marred only by a tiny crack on the left lens of her sunglasses. Clad in little leather racing gloves, Emily’s hands gripped the steering wheel like iron vices.

Something about the hum and the vibrations and the constant growl of the machine kept her calm. She loved the feeling of sheer speed, slicing through the world like a knife; and appreciated that sense of escape from reality that it always gave her.

Now, more than ever, she needed that calm, that sensation of riding the eye of the storm—that escape. Because she was going to see Julian’s killer in person and it was going to take everything out of her to not lose her mind.

Was it the gravity of fast motion, pushing her back into her seat that helped center her? Was it the threat of deadly accidents that freed her mind from every burdening thought and worry? Or was it because she felt both in control and dangerous whenever she drove too fast?

Emily wondered, but refused to answer her own questions.

She maintained a speed just a few miles per hour above the legal limit. Just enough to make good time on her ride to Starkford Penitentiary, and just enough to try to talk her way out of trouble if a cop pulled her over.

Thoughts surfaced. Thoughts about Kathryn Shaw. Emily tried to push them back down because they only made every one of her digits tense up more—the leather of her gloves cracked as her grip around the steering wheel tightened.

Any efforts to dispel the thoughts all failed. The image search on Shaw haunted Emily. Kathryn Shaw was just some forgettable D-list celebrity and the spectrum of her headshots ranged from pretty young lady all the way to monstrosity who had gone under the knife of plastic surgery too often for her own good. Murdering Julian Stone would probably be her biggest legacy, overshadowing her pathetic acting career and her quest for the perfect face.

This only fed the tension building in every fiber of Emily’s being, because Shaw’s obsession with her own beauty was what had killed Julian.

But was it just tension? Or pure anger welling up inside? The engine’s growls grounded Emily for a brief glimpse, allowing her to notice just how obscenely fast she was going now, and she eased up on her leadfoot for a bit. Every thought of Kathryn Shaw just poured more gasoline onto the flames of Emily’s fury.

As you know, every time you pour fuel into the flames, you run risk of the fire igniting the stream, traveling back up its length and blowing the canister up in your hands. That exact image entered Emily’s mind and made her crave another cigarette. It hadn’t even been five minutes since the last one.

No matter.

She rolled down the window on her old Charger and lit up her smoke. Swore up a storm as a chunk of tobacco got stuck on the car’s internal lighter and fumed out of the slot when she returned it. Instead of pulling over to fix this like a sane person, Emily took her eyes off the road and tapped the lighter outside her car door.

When she looked up, the honking of a horn ripped her right back into the reality of her current whereabouts and she reacted just in time, swerving back onto her lane of the road. The honking persisted, blaring and trailing off as the other car traveled down the opposite lane, expressing what she considered to be a petty anger when compared to her own.

Emily flipped the other driver the bird and took a long, greedy drag from her cigarette to cool off.

She always found it strange how little such near-death experiences like this never really fazed her. Some part of her was always prepared to die. Hell, the other part of her was already dead.

All the nights she had spent alone ever since Julian’s death, looking out over the nightly skyline of L.A., she had gone through every single stage—from wanting to die, over not seeing a purpose in life anymore, to wanting someone to pay, and ending up with a fire flaring up deep down inside of her, fueled by her darkest thoughts and fantasies. A fire that made her swear more than she ever used to; a fire that motivated her and would drive her to ever greater heights in her career.

Telling the truth, no matter how much it hurt. Exposing lies and toppling the liars. Bringing down all those awful pyramids of deception, tearing down the walls of filth built by the life-thieves and the soul-violators. Destroying the machinery of oppression fabricated by the real monsters of this world.

Her thoughts spiraled. The moment she realized she was thinking about her quest for truth and revealing the darkness to the world, no sooner did she remember that Shaw was to blame for her current anger. Emily had always been angry with the world: corrupt politicians feeding their fat faces, greedy psychopaths running the business world, and selfish assholes walking all over the downtrodden were everywhere. They didn’t even lurk in the shadows—no, the ghouls just lived in our very midst, normalizing their wicked ways and turning people jaded to the point of not caring anymore.

Every time she blinked, another six such shit-sticks just sprung into existence somewhere else.

While smoking cooled her down, it couldn’t put a lid on the boiling pot of rage bubbling in her belly region.

The whole ordeal of this prison visit alone would have been enough to make her mad, just thinking about it.

Short visiting hours. She had had to make an appointment over a month in advance. Fill out huge forms and provide copies of all sorts of personal documents. Wait for approval. Get all sorts of instructions on what she was allowed to wear or not: no orange, no underwire bra, no yoga pants, no sleeveless shirts, no open toes.

Luckily, her childhood friend Carlos had warned her about all this from his short stint in working at a different prison in the past. They might have just turned her away the moment she showed up if she didn’t meet all of their ridiculous requirements, and put her through the whole rigmarole of applying all over again.

All of this just to schedule a conversation—with her fiancé’s murderer.

Emily snorted, blowing smoke out of her nostrils. She flicked on the radio. An effective distraction would be great, any time now.

An overconfident voice actor spoke, “Enjoy a flat white at a price that’s easier to swallow from the—”

Raspy voice, trained in feigning gravitas, said, “Most of the things I do are misunderstood. Hey, after all, being misunderstood is the fate of all true—”

A dulcet male voice sang, “I’m gonna kick my feet up and stare at the fan, turn the TV on, throw my hand in my pants—”

Annoying advertising. Annoying talking. Annoying pop music. She kept poking the device to switch the channels. At the very least, she could direct her anger at the shallow superficiality of the world of radio entertainment, letting the heat die down somewhat and reducing the boiling of her blood to a low simmer. She avoided any news. News would just add to her anger.

The sunglasses shielded her eyes from the blinding light of the morning sun, still low on the horizon over the woods lining the road.

More smoking, idly ignoring all the chatter and music from the radio, and sitting on the lid to the pot of rage inside of her. Another two hours of driving flew by. The landscape around her transformed along the way, with her Charger exiting the lines of trees and darting over the long roads in the hills, in the middle of nowhere.

Like blacking out, she sighed when she seemingly came to her senses in the lobby where visitors could wait.

The anger was back.

The stupid card machine kept spitting out her dollar bills while she attempted to charge it with money. After the sixth attempt and growing increasingly anxious about the guy breathing down her neck behind her, Emily slapped the top of the device three times.

One of the guards nearby cleared her throat and shot Emily a dirty look. Emily just glared back at her but swallowed a glib remark. Either she wanted to bottle all the anger up and direct it at someone truly deserving, like Shaw, or she didn’t want to get into trouble until she had done such.

In truth, Emily wanted answers. She just wanted to know why Kathryn Shaw had killed. The most mysterious thing about Julian’s death was why Kathryn murdered him. The police said that he had turned her down for repeat requests to conduct further rhinoplasty where other surgeons had already turned her down before, and she had snapped. Bludgeoned him with a tire iron and stuffed him into the trunk of her car.

Finally, the card reader swallowed her cash. Emily groaned and muttered more profanities under her breath and left, engulfed in a cloud of mounting frustration and volatile impatience. The man waiting in line behind her dodged away a full step when she glared at him while she took a walk to the vending machines.

Thinking about the circumstances of Julian’s death did the opposite of helping her temper or curbing any anger.

Supposedly, Kathryn had thought that beating Julian over the back of his head had only knocked him unconscious. In truth, he must have died slowly in her trunk. Painfully. The police detective Emily talked to didn’t say it in those exact words, but she knew enough to piece it together.

Not only anger accompanied Emily that day, but something else: fear.

Fear that she might lose control and do something like strangling Kathryn. Also, a fear of seeing the face of a murderer who had had so much surgery done that Emily only saw her visage as an accurate and frightening representation of what Kathryn truly was deep down—a monster.

The crazy bitch had killed her Julian because he refused to help her continue destroying her own damned face? The choleric reporter wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. It was so simple. Too mundane.

Maybe Kathryn Shaw could offer the straight dope. Maybe Emily could tickle it out of her, provoke her into spilling something she wouldn’t admit to the authorities. Maybe something darker.

Another wave of fury washed over her when she stood at the vending machines to get some snacks and something to drink. Everything cleaned out—empty. Nothing for her to buy after wasting cash on the stupid card machine?

Fuck this place, she thought. Fuck the entire prison system.

Under normal circumstances, she would have blurted that out; released her rage at one of the people working here. However, she wanted to avoid sabotaging her chances at speaking to Kathryn. Not only had the private penitentiary made this visit an absurd chore, she had had to get through lengthy talks with Shaw’s lawyers to get this going without outside interference.

Emily had signed waivers and papers just to promise she wouldn’t be using or publishing anything that transpired in this meeting.

In a huff, she sat down in the waiting area. Checked her emails on her phone to find another way of distracting herself. Canceled interview meeting. Bill. Bill. Bank complaining about her account being in the red. Bill. Advertisements. Annoying newsletter. Complaints about details on an invoice. Just a swamp of unanswered, unread messages she could not have cared any less about right now. Still, she found something oddly meditative about sifting through them and getting some of this busywork done.

Until she reached one mail: from an anonymous source in the crime syndicate exposé she was working on. The informant was backing off, chickening out, refusing to meet for a statement.

Emily blacked out. Next thing she knew, the display of her phone was covered in a spiderweb of cracks. Several people in the waiting room stared at her and her surroundings had gone dead silent.

A guard stood next to her and fidgeted, one brow arched as she stared Emily down and said, “Ma'am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you can’t get it together.”

Emily nodded in defeat. Whatever she had just done that resulted in cracking her own phone—shouting? Screaming? Beating inanimate objects? The startled looks from the strangers all around her told her that her outburst had been profound. She also felt a lot calmer, like the valves had opened for a spell and released some of the steam. Judging by everybody’s reactions, she must have given off that exact air.

Though the anger was still there, albeit more subdued.

Emily Graves was an angry person by nature. Always had been. Her best friend Chris never liked how worked up she got when she ranted about anything and turned it into cascading and unstoppable tirades.

Today was different. She had never felt as angry as she did this day.

She did something uncharacteristically different and apologized. Standing beside herself and watching it happen as if she was in a dream, she wondered who in all hell’s name this Emily was—sounding meek and remorseful. But there she was, the other Emily, making sure she’d get through this day far enough to speak with Kathryn Shaw.

The guard left her alone to waiting, and Emily slumped into the hard plastic chair. The light glared too brightly in here for her to decipher anything on the now-cracked display of her phone, so she put it away.

Focus. Breathe.

Focus.

Forcing herself to clear her mind of all thoughts, Emily cycled through the things she had learned in Berkeley. She reverted into the green journalist, melting into the background and observing. Watching.

The waiting area had it all. The facial expressions on the people here, the invisible clouds of air surrounding them, carrying the entire gamut of emotions: joy, sadness, regret, anger, and everything in between. One of the other visitors waiting there emanated with an aura of rage to rival Emily’s own. It somehow helped her cool down herself, seeing this other lady completely self-absorbed in a blinding haze of wrath.

This kind of place could probably do that to anybody.

She took a deep breath and went to the bathroom. Carlos told her that going to the bathroom during the visit itself is a pain of its own, so it was best to get it out of the way immediately.

No mirrors in the restrooms.

Emily splashed her face with cold water. She wanted to smoke really badly. Even though she couldn’t inhale that sweet, sweet poison any time soon, she nervously produced the pack from her pocket book and checked it. Two smokes left; not even halfway through the day.

“One hell of a drive here,” she muttered. Another woman in the restrooms just gave her a funny look, and Emily returned to the waiting area.

Eventually, she was buzzed in.

They stamped her wrist with invisible ink. Allowed her to put all her possessions in a locker. Asked redundant questions. Sent her through the metal detectors, searched her, jammed a plastic pass into her hand. Half of the hurdles made sense to Emily, leaving her to wonder about the other half.

She sat in a small windowless room and waited. The thick doors and walls muffled the repeated buzzing for other visits elsewhere. Emily had expected them to be meeting with a wall of bulletproof glass separating her and Kathryn Shaw, but it looked like the visiting room was just an open space with two entrances—two ominous metal doors.

Table in the center surrounded by rigid plastic chairs, all bolted down.

A guard waited behind her, hands folded in front of her and probably staving off boredom whenever she wasn’t ready to pounce and intervene.

Little to stop Emily from exploding into a fireball and clawing Kathryn’s eyes out.

She wondered how often the guards here had to deal with drama like that. Emily found herself wondering what it would be like to be tased.

The other door opened, interrupting such thoughts, and two people entered. Kathryn, dressed in the orange jumpsuit of the inmates here, hands shackled with cuffs, was directed to the chair on the opposite side of the table. The guard accompanying her took her place behind her next to the other door.

Kathryn’s long blonde hair was frazzled, messy. Her bleary eyes darted around, barely registering Emily. She looked crazy, but not scared or threatening in any way. To the reporter, she looked far more pathetic than she had expected—not that that helped defuse the rage.

So Emily decided to start off simple. Ease Kathryn into things, and hell, herself as well. Maybe she’d keep her anger under control by conducting herself in a professional fashion.

“Hello Kathryn,” she said. Emily pressed her lips together so hard that they turned into thin white strips. “I’m Emily Graves.”

Kathryn nodded and emitted a feeble, “Hi.”

She looked her visitor up and down but evidently did not recognize her.

“I’m a freelance reporter who has worked for a few major outlets in California.”

Kathryn’s eyes went wide. Emily expected her to shrink from that, but triggered something else entirely. Kathryn nodded emphatically—excitedly. She was thrilled.

D-list celebrity alright. Probably thought she was going to get “justice” or exposure to use in her memoirs, or God only knew what.

“Now, just to be clear, I’m not here in a professional capacity,” Emily said, trying to suss out if Kathryn still had enough marbles left in her noggin for her to speak with her regular vocabulary, or if she had to dial down her language to the level she’d use for someone certifiable.

Kathryn’s face, disfigured from years and an excess of plastic surgery, scrunched up in confusion. She nodded some more, signaling Emily to continue.

“I came here because—”

Emily choked on the words. She choked on the thoughts. Instead of rage welling up, her mind flashed back to the moment when the coroner pulled out the metal slab. The slab on which a dead body lay.

She swallowed, hard.

She remembered the day she identified Julian’s body in the morgue, in the company of Detective Tanner.

Pale, lifeless, hopeless. Dead. Shattered skull. Shattered dreams.

Shattered heart.

Was her heart racing with terror, or slowing to a halt?

Kathryn just looked at her through wide eyes, expecting something. Something more. Something that immediately disgusted Emily.

Attention.

It brought the anger back. The simmering turned back up, like stepping on the gas pedal and revving the engine. The roar of the motor. The pressure of gravity, of speed, of powerful motion. Pouring gasoline into the fire.

“I came because you murdered my fiancé, Julian. I—I just need to know. I need to know why.”

Kathryn nodded some more, like a deranged toddler trapped in a horrific grown woman’s body. Then her nodding transformed into her shaking her head quickly. She squinted as she continued to shake her head in disbelief.

“No, Doctor Stone is fine. I didn’t murder anybody!”

Emily blinked, letting that sink in. She disbelieved the disbelief. The world slowed down to a halt. The imaginary car she was driving in crashed into a solid brick wall in slow motion. Scrap parts exploded into a dazzling rain of metallic fireworks.

The flames flared up. The stream of gasoline being poured into it caught fire. It traveled upwards, in slow motion, just like the car crashing into the wall.

The rage boiled. The lid shuddered, clattered. Emily’s heart was racing indeed, pounding like thunder. Like those Japanese drums.

“Listen, honey, I’ll be out soon and with my lawyers, we’ll clear this all up, just you wait and see. I’m so sorry about what I did. I lost it and—well, things worked out in the end, yeah? I’m sure Doctor Stone will do what I asked him for then, and we’ll find a way to—”

The rushing of blood in Emily’s ears drowned out this crazy bitch’s words. The world narrowed, with darkness encroaching from the edges of her field of vision until everything had turned into a tunnel, with the only light at the end of it consisting of this monster’s artificial-looking face.

The tunnel collapsed. Complete darkness. Just the pounding of those drums, the beating of her heart.

The sound that the human hand makes when hitting flesh is strange. Like a wet bag filled with raw meat slapping onto a hard kitchen counter. That association only registered with Emily with delay.

She must have slapped or punched Kathryn multiple times before the guards pried her away. Signing papers and getting reprimanded were things that came back to her later. Emily walked out of that hellhole, putting on her sunglasses again as broad daylight from the merciless sun instantly gave her a headache. Or maybe it was the dehydration coupled with the rage. Her mouth felt as dry as Death Valley looked.

She had lost time. Her wrists hurt, she had been detained temporarily. Someone told her this was not uncommon. Warned her, told her not to show her face there again. Said she was lucky Shaw’s lawyers wouldn’t end up pressing charges, because she’d probably forget what happened by dinner time.

Emily sat on the hood of the Charger, smoking. Only one cigarette left and four hours of driving back to Los Angeles ahead of her. A veritable tower of ash formed at the end of the glimmering little death-stick between her fingers. Her ears still rang with the aftereffects of adrenaline and rage.

In her mind, she went to and fro, like liquid sloshing back and forth in a bucket. Like the gasoline, always threatening to spill over the edge and fall into the flames; threatening to feed that all-devouring fire. She struggled to piece together what had happened but a burning darkness blotted out parts of those memories.

It couldn’t have been too bad or she might have gotten arrested on the spot. Or maybe the guards took pity on her, having a hunch about what was going on there. Or maybe this entire world was so callous and cruel that nobody truly gave a damn.

Whatever had truly happened in that cold claustrophobic room with the uncomfortably cool air conditioning, it had not helped Emily. Not at all.

She had walked out of Starkford with answers less satisfying than the meager ones she had entered with. She hated the concept of America’s prison system, but a more sadistic part of her hoped that Kathryn would suffer and rot in there for the rest of her miserable life.

Emily stamped out the cigarette, grinding it with her heel with extreme prejudice, and got behind the wheel again.

Speeding might help. Her addiction made her mentally check at which gas station she’d stop next to buy more smokes. Getting back to work, perhaps following up on the Mancini “murder house” next—maybe these things would get her mind off of the hell that was living on this God-forsaken planet, hurtling through space until the sun died and the heat death of the universe ended everything.

Or maybe just drowning everything in a bottle of whiskey.

But everything Emily enjoyed at this point was self-destructive.

Nothing would truly help. None of it would quench the fires of her rage.

Just pour more gasoline into the flames.

She revved the engine. The tires screeched and the Charger sped away.

—Submitted by Wratts

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make-it-mavis · 5 years

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I Should Tell You

Wreck-it Ralph fic Main timeline (Post Roadblasters, ~1988) 8270 words Characters: Make-it Mavis, Turbo Content Warnings: Scary nightmare sequence, Themes of trauma Premise: For the third night in a row, Make-it Mavis wakes screaming from a nightmare. Turbo is there to help her calm down, but there’s something about it that is taking a toll on him, too. There are so many things he wants to know, but there is only one thing that Mavis feels she can tell him. (Consider this a bit of a teaser for Homesick, my upcoming massive fic!)

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She could not stop. No matter what, she had to keep moving. Her thighs burned with the strain. Her knees and ankles cried out in agony with each footfall that beat wildly against the uneven terrain, sending shockwave after shockwave up her bones. Her feet could have very well been bloody mush in her shoes by then, for all she knew. But she could not slow, not even for an instant. Every muscle in her body had to be put to work. Even her overwhelming adrenaline did not quite mask all the pain, but it at least gave her the will to push through it, and the knowledge that it would quickly be unimaginably worse if she let her pursuers catch her.

Through the whistling wind, pounding heartbeat, ragged breathing, and rapid rhythm of her feet on the wet forest floor, she could hear them. No matter how far she ran, she could always hear them. That haunting howling that would blow between the bare, twisting trees like a pack of ghosts. That barking, that horrible, wet, savage barking, like commands shouted between them as they worked together to hunt her down. In all likelihood, they would succeed. She was outnumbered three to one. They could run forever, but she felt ready to die on her feet. If it came to it, if they caught her, she would not be able to fight back. Her brush had long since vanished out of existence, and her fists alone would be useless against three sets of snapping jaws.

But if she were doomed to die, she would die fighting, even if her lightning speed was the only weapon she had left.

In the misty moonlight, the dead, black trees hunched over like weary old men, and they smeared into a blur in her vision. It seemed a damn miracle that she had somehow managed to successfully leap over every rock and exposed root that reached up in an almost deliberate attempt to trip her, but her winning streak could not last forever. It ended when her foot fell on empty air, and she found herself falling.

Her foot found earth again, but it was slanted, and momentum wrenched her ankle into a burst of searing pain. She fell forward -- not very far, but at the rate she was going, her shoulder met the ground with horrible enthusiasm. Amazingly, her internal screams of agony did not leave her body at all, and by some blessing of the Devs, her hand found purchase, and her descent was halted.

It was hard to see much of anything due to the water in her eyes and the shadows falling over her new position, but she quickly figured that she was clinging to a hill so steep that it aspired to be a cliff. And, to her horror, she could not see the bottom at all, or even the other side. The forest just seemed to burrow down farther than the moonlight dared to go. Injured, terrified, there was no way she could move forward there. But the howling was only growing louder, so she had to think fast. And her first thought was to hide.

Looking back up the hill, right next to where she fell, she could see a thick, gnarled tree, one that perched so dangerously close to the edge that it almost seemed curious about the darkness below. In what little moonlight came through, she could see its roots jutting out of the earth and curving down into what could have been a little cage. It seemed risky, but it was her only idea, whether it was a good one or not. So she took it.

With great difficulty, using the sheer power of fear to overcome the pain in her ankle and shoulder, she dragged herself back up and took hold of the roots. They were thick and sturdy like flexed wooden arms, of which she was quite thankful as she wormed her way between them. Once inside the dark little cage, she braced herself as best as she could against the curved earth inside, just praying she could stay still enough to not disturb any dirt and send it rolling down the hill.

The barking grew louder and louder, and as she waited for her pursuers to arrive on the scene, she had just enough time to see reality for what it was.

She was going to die there. Caged. Hiding. Terrified. Alone.

Alone, even after everything.

She could feel the ground vibrate just the slightest bit as their galloping feet drew near. This was it -- her time was up.

There was a yelp, and a thump, and her whole body clenched. She dared to look only with her peripherals, but still managed to see and hear one of those monsters rolling haphazardly down the hill. It was visible only for a second in the scarce moonlight, just a blink of white fur and a spray of upset earth, before it and its awful wailing were swallowed up by the darkness.

She began to wonder if that would have been a preferable fate.

Along the ridge of the hill, she could hear distressed paws pacing back and forth. Their breath was ragged, and they kept whining these terrible warbling moans that made her insides shrivel. Before long, she heard the soft thuds of their feet steadily meeting the hill, and the hissing of sandy dirt bleeding down the hillside. The sound only reminded her to keep still as a stone statue, or her position would be given away.

Through the spaces in her little cage, she saw one of the hideous creatures descend the hill diagonally. She tried her best not to look at it directly, but even seeing it at all blew a literal chill over her body, and she tried desperately not to shiver. The fact that it was moving away from her was a good thing, anyway, but it did not matter. There was still one left, and the third one was never the charm.

A scream quite nearly left her as the third one stepped into view, barely a few feet from her cage. From her fairly flat position under the outcropping, she could see only its spindly legs, with that patchy hide that clung so tightly to every tendon, every vein, every band of muscle, and those long, bony paws that could have passed for mangled hands. The sight of it seemed to send a blast of icy air into her eyes that spread through her whole body. She wanted to look away, or at least close her eyes, but she just could not. Her gaze was fixed on the monster as it shifted around. To her horror, its head lowered a bit, giving her a clear view of those jagged, golden teeth. Even in the darkness, the paint dripping from its jaws and soaking down the ragged white fur of its neck was vivid and vibrant, like a pungent rainbow of gore. The smell alone was enough to make her light-headed.

Normally, she would have begged the Devs for any sort of weapon, anything to give her a fighting chance. But, somehow, she knew it was over. She did not want it to be, but it really was over. After all, she had nothing left. Her cousin sent her away. She had no game anymore. She had no brush. Disgraced, despised, with not a friendly face left in the arcade.

After all, her best friend in the world, the one sprite she had the gall to let herself fall in love with, was dead.

Again.

But this time, he was not coming back. She could not protect him, not even from himself. She should have been there for him. She should have made sure he knew he was loved. Why did she never tell him? Why did she ignore her second chance? He deserved to know. She wanted him to know, but he never would.

Devs, the regrets she would be dying with that night…

It was not until hot beads of tears rolled down her frigid cheeks that she realized she was crying. That alone was a sign to her that it was almost over. She did not know how long she could go without trembling from her weeping breaths. She just wished she could see him, just one last time. Even just to say goodbye.

Sharp pain sliced into her chest. And then it sliced again. She stopped breathing completely, frozen by the memory in her head, and by the knowledge of what the pain meant. Hot, stinging pain raked slowly over the skin of her chest like a wicked claw, and she felt warmth rolling sickly down her belly. She was bleeding… but the fumes were giving her a headache. It was not blood, and she knew it would not be.

All the same, she gingerly touched her chest, and lifted her hand to look. Stained on her white glove, the colors just as bright as they would be in daylight, was paint.

She lowered her hand, and immediately screamed. It smelled her. It smelled her, and its head was bent down and twisted so it could look into her cage with an empty, black eye. It growled, and terror unlike any other ruptured inside her body, the kind of terror that would team up with her will to live, and make a last-ditch, all-out attack against death itself…

But it failed.

The roots splintered, the snarling dog thrust its snapping jaws inside, and clamped onto her thigh like a steel trap. She shrieked, begging the Devs to let her die any other way, but the monster yanked her leg so hard, her whole body slammed against the roots. Just as she could feel her hip about to pop apart, something touched her shoulder, and she shot upright with a scream.

It took Mavis a few seconds to question why she did not hit her head on the roots above. It was because there were, in fact, no roots above. There was darkness, but it did not feel malicious. The air was cold, but it felt familiar. The dirt and leaves were cushions and blankets, and the touch came not from some new horror, but from the very friend she thought she lost.

"Hey, hey," Turbo was saying in a groggy but still genuine voice, "it's cool. It's fine. You're awake; whatever it was, it wasn't real. It's all good."

But it was not all good. Even as he rubbed Mavis' back, her heart still pounded painfully. She could feel a chill of sweat over her skin, and the cushions and blankets were soaked with it. Her eyes darted around, trying to ground herself with the sight of reality -- she was in the empty wall socket as usual, lying on the couch in the corner, as usual, and there were everyday items and junk strewn across the floor in an organized chaos, as usual. But it was all a bit hard to see, sort of blurry and out of focus. She realized then that while most of the dream was not real, the crying was. And it only seemed to get worse as she continued to wake. She wanted to believe that it was no longer from fear, but she could not deny that she was shaken to the core. The most paranoid part of her brain wanted her to believe this was all some trick, that she had not been asleep at all, and one of those beasts could have been creeping just out of sight. Try as she might, she could not drop her guard.

As her breathing began to quake harder, and choked, suppressed sobbing began to work its way out, Turbo seemed to decide he had given her enough space. He scooted closer, curled an arm across her shoulders, and his slightly hung head bonked gently above her temple. She felt him sigh.

"Real bad one, huh?" he muttered.

Mavis took a deep, shuddering breath, attempting to slow the spasming in her abdomen. "S'fine," she rasped. "I'll be fine. I'm not even-- I'm not even-- all that upset-- It just-- won't stop--"

All lies. She tried very hard to buy into her own brave face, but the tears seemed to just pour out, hot with fear. Turbo did not seem convinced either, as she expected. His hand rubbed her shoulder hard enough for the touch to sink in.

"It's okay," he insisted quietly. "You're awake. We're safe here. Nothin' to be scared of."

"I'm not scared--" she tried to protest, but burst into unfiltered sobbing before she could finish. She hid her wet face in her hand, feeling small, ashamed as ever to be seen crying. She leaned forward, and Turbo's head lifted, but his arm remained. He could not seem to decide where to rub, be it shoulder, neck, or back, as he watched her.

After a few moments of silence from him, he sighed in a sad sort of way, "Jeez, Mav," and leaned forward to wrap his other arm around her as well, pulling her close.

The embrace, being held right up against the sprite she had just dreamed about losing again, was too much. She had to be closer, to really understand that he was there. Twisting around, she caught him in a tight hug and buried her face in his neck.

"Yep," he muttered, "yep. There it is." As she continued to quake and hiccup, he merely let her cry it out, rubbing her back and instinctively rocking just a bit. Mavis concentrated on the warmth of his skin, the familiarity of his code, hoping it would calm her down. But, for a time, it only brought more tears. Rather than tears of fear, though, they were merely release, just purging all the nasty emotions she had just been through, now that she felt safe to do so.

There was a whole lot to purge, so she remained there for a little while. Turbo had begun to droop a little bit by the time her tears ran dry.

“T,” she said wearily, straightening up.

Turbo inhaled sharply, but looked at her calmly through squinting eyes. “Hm?”

“I’m… gonna get up,” she told him. “I don’t want to sleep anymore. But you can go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

He sniffed. “Y’sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, if you say so,” he said, giving her back a few solid pats before standing up himself and wandering away a bit. Before Mavis could question him, he said, “I gotta switch the blankets up. Everything’s soaked.”

“Ah,” she sighed. “Right. Lemme, uh, help with that.”

Mavis stood and tossed away the wet blankets while Turbo approached with some fresh ones -- they were lucky the empty socket was so chilly already, so Mavis had brought in plenty of blankets in their time there. The more nightmares she had, the more thankful she was for all the spares.

As she helped Turbo lay out a clean blanket over the damp cushions, a shiver suddenly rocked her to her core. A chill came over her, one that bypassed cold and went right into freezing. She backed up, suddenly hunched and stiff with vibrations in her bones that were almost painful. It was one of the rare times she regretted wearing so little to bed. Turbo, sleepy as he was, did not notice. He just threw a thicker blanket over the couch and started to crawl into it. Mavis may as well have teleported, with how quickly she zipped in under the blanket.

Turbo just sort of grunted in confusion as she rolled over him, taking the spot closer to the back cushions, which tended to be hers, anyway. He eyed her as he settled in, and grunted once again when she clung quite tightly to his body, drawn to his heat like a magnet.

“Ow-- Ok, then,” he said, “this don’t look like ‘getting up’ to me.”

“I’m freakin’ freezing, okay,” she huffed. “My sweat works a bit too well. I’m stealin’ your demon heat.”

He scoffed a bit. “I might make a joke outta that, if I weren’t so tired,” he mumbled. “But alright, take it, ya cold, clingy zombie.”

He pulled the blanket right up over their shoulders and tugged her even closer. Mavis ducked her head down under his jaw and soaked in the warmth like a hot bath, slowly feeling her shivering disappear and her muscles relax. It was the most calm she had felt since she woke up, but she still felt no sleepiness, no heaviness in her eyelids. Her eyes did sting from all the crying, but the fear had chased all sleep from her head. Instead, she just lay there, trying to really take in the safety and serenity of the moment. She watched the blankets rise and fall with Turbo’s breathing. She listened to his heart under her ear, and the strange but soothing way it seemed to rumble like an idle engine.

He’s fine, she thought. He’s right here. He’s safe, and so am I.

After some time of idly brushing her thumb against his collarbone, she noticed something odd. If he was so tired, she ought to have heard at least a hint of snoring by that point. Somehow, he still had not fallen asleep. She thought about asking him what was up, but she supposed that would not have gotten him to sleep any quicker.

It would not have mattered anyway, because shortly after that, Turbo voiced what was up on his own.

Calmly, almost sadly, he asked, “Why won’t you tell me what happened to you?”

Mavis’ heart thumped with a strange guilt. She knew what he was talking about, but still, after a moment, she asked quietly, “What’s got you asking that right now?”

“Mav,” he sighed in tired frustration, “three nights in a row, I’ve had to talk you down from a nightmare. And-- well, that’s not so much the problem. Obviously, I’ll do that. But-- just-- you-- you’re shuttin’ me out. I don’t even know what I’m talkin’ you down from. I don’t know what happened to you while we were apart, and-- and I’m just left here puttin’ the pieces together from whatever you…” he let out a rough exhale, and took just a moment before continuing, “...from whatever you’re cryin’ out in your sleep. I know some of it, but… I know there’s stuff I didn’t see that you’re not tellin’ me.”

Mavis listened quietly. There seemed very little that she could stand to say. An avoidant sadness settled in over her mind, and she did not speak.

Turbo broke the silence, the pain in his low voice hardly masked at all. “All I know about what I-- what I did, put you through, is that… it makes you wake up screaming. How… How am I supposed to deal with that?”

Miserable cinders burned in Mavis’ chest. “You don’t need to know,” she whispered before rolling to face away from him. “It’s all over, now, anyway.”

She could feel Turbo staring at the back of her head. “No, I really do,” he insisted. “That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you.”

Eyes downcast, she did not reply.

The cushions bounced just a bit as Turbo rolled his body to face her. “Are you tryin’ to spare me, or somethin’? Don’t want me to feel bad? ‘Cause, uh, I already feel bad. Keepin’ me in the dark ain’t helpin’ with that. Leavin’ it all up to my imagination ain’t a mercy, trust me.”

Again, she gave no reply.

“Are you just-- Well…” he mumbled, “Do you think I don’t deserve to know… after everything?”

“That’s not it,” she muttered miserably.

“Then what?”

Once more, she stayed silent.

After a long pause, one that made her worry over what he might say next, Turbo whispered carefully, “Is it really just so terrible that you can’t stand to talk about it?”

Mavis did him the kindness of considering that question carefully. It was so complicated, and explaining why seemed like such a daunting thing. In many ways, she had made progress with her trauma… but still, she had told the whole story to no one. Even if the thought of Turbo knowing was not so upsetting to her, she would barely know where to start. What small, gruesome details could she stand to leave out? At what point would she start to sound like a victim, even if she really was one? Horrors aside, they had all been some of the most helpless, powerless moments of her life. That was not a side of her that she wanted anyone to see if they did not absolutely have to.

But that was beginning to seem like the case for Turbo.

Mavis barely breathed, barely moved. “Yeah. I guess that’s part of it.”

He went quiet.

“I know that’s…” Mavis spoke again, “...probably not what you wanna hear right now.”

Quietly, he replied, “Don’t tell me what I wanna hear. Just tell me the truth.”

“I…” she paused, pondered, debated… surrendered. “I will. I’m just… not ready, yet. But I will.”

He sighed. “Well… that’s closer than I’ve gotten so far, anyway. Is that a promise?”

Without turning to look, she reached her hand back just over her shoulder, pinky finger extended, and felt Turbo firmly hook his over it.

“Promise,” she agreed sadly.

Turbo released her hand, instead letting it rub over the curves of her waist, kind of anxiously. “Good ‘nuff,” he muttered.

“Good ‘nuff to get you to sleep?” she asked, not unkindly.

There was a small sound in his throat that could have passed for a laugh. “‘Go to sleep ‘n quit buggin’ me, demon boy,’” he mocked playfully, in an impressively accurate impression of her accent. “‘I got some ass-kickin’ to do.’”

Mavis managed a smile, even after all that. “Sounds like you’re fixin’ for it to be your ass,” she said, finally managing to turn around just enough to look at him. “You a demon, or a parrot?”

He raspberried a bit. “Parrots wish they had my skills, Mav,” he said, before taking advantage of her turned head to steal one quick kiss. “G’night. Just dream ‘bout me if you sleep again, huh?”

“Mm,” she gave him a bit of a playful smile as he turned his back and squirmed into a cozy position. Dreaming of him was often the problem, she thought to herself, but his intentions were pure. She turned back to face the cushions again, and pondered how nice it would have been to have a good dream about him for once. After all, he was one of the best parts of her life when she was awake. Stressful, frustrating, and risky, for sure, but even in the cold empty socket, she would not have traded time with him for anything. He was some kind of unthinkable miracle, being back in her life even after she had mourned him. After all the times she wished for just one more chance to see him, even just to say goodbye, or even just to tell him how much she…

Her thoughts slowed and dragged. The same old guilt as ever weighed down on her, the same that so frequently came up in her nightmares. Here she was, with that second chance that she had begged for, and then some, but still… she was shutting him out. So many things that she wanted to tell him were being caged up in the same box as the traumas. She could not think of what to say to him without thinking about the time she believed him to be dead, and she could not entertain the idea of that happening again. She did not have to rush to tell him anything, because he was in no danger of dying again. She would have plenty of time.

She wanted to tell him, she really did, but… she was afraid.

No.

No, she could not be afraid, she firmly told herself, crushing down that guilt with all her might. She could not waste her time being afraid of emotions anymore. Regardless of Turbo’s safety or how much time they had left, she wanted to tell him. Not because he almost died, but because it was the truth.

Did he not just ask her for the truth, after all?

It was time he heard it.

Summoning up all the emotional bravery she had, she flipped onto her belly and propped herself up on elbows that were far shakier than she would have liked to acknowledge. She looked over at Turbo, and she could tell he was already drifting off. She should have let him sleep, but it just could not wait a second longer. It was overdue already.

“Hey, T,” she said a bit hesitantly.

He startled just a bit, but then turned enough to peer over his shoulder. “Mm-hmm?”

Heat rushed to her face. Suddenly realizing she had no plans, she fumbled for words. “Uh… Well, um… there actually is something I can tell you.”

Turbo’s eyes widened, and he blinked the sleepiness out of them as he rolled over to face her. He seemed almost too intent on listening to speak, staying still as if he believed he might startle her and she would change her mind. Even though he believed he was about to hear something horrible, something that might give him unimaginable guilt, he was still so eager to know, just because he did not want her to suffer alone from his mistake. It was a level of empathy and care that she never would have believed possible from him before. She knew it was special, and that she might have been the only one who would ever see it. And she realized right then that, for the first time in her life, she was not afraid of being loved.

A calm came over her, and she simply told him what he needed to know.

“I love you.”

That seemed to stun him a bit. His head simply rose slightly, his wide eyes still staring at her.

“That’s…” she found herself fumbling again, “...all I wanted to say. So… um…”

She leaned over just long enough to kiss him on the forehead, before turning her back to him again and hugging a roll of blanket to her chest. “G’night,” she said quietly.

Turbo was still silent, and she remained silent as well, although her brain was nothing but ‘Holy crit holy crit holy crit holy crit.’ As far as Turbo’s thoughts went, she had no idea. He had been quiet for so long. Eventually, he scooted up behind her once again, but closer this time. She said nothing, but knew she was just a hair away from nervous sweating.

It’s okay, she thought, no matter what he says, I said what I needed to, and that’s what matters.

There was a sound from Turbo, and it made her jump. But it was not words, merely soft, stifled chuckling.

“What’s the joke, chucklenuts?” she asked suspiciously.

“Ha-ha-ha, no. No, it just-- Well, it’s just about freakin’ time, Mav, don’tcha think?” he spoke with a smile in his voice. “I was almost thinkin’ you’d never say it out loud.”

She shot him a grumpy look over her shoulder. “Well, I still beat you to it, didn’t I?”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “But I had no intention on sayin’ it first.”

“Why? You love goin’ first.”

“Mmm, y’know, the whole mushy scene ain’t really my thing,” he chuckled. “I’d say it wasn’t really yours, either, but, hey, you said it first.”

Mavis scoffed, “Okay, so I spill some major beans, and you’re just gonna--”

“Not to mention,” he interrupted her, “all those mushy songs you used to write about me.”

She huffed a high, indignant laugh. “They were not about you!”

He just looked at her, a knowing grin on his face.

Her frown grew as her face heated up. “Not all of ‘em, anyway--”

Turbo just laughed, and she would have welcomed it if he were not being so annoying. Mavis twisted to lie on her back, and Turbo propped up on an elbow to watch her face.

“They weren’t even that mushy,” she grumbled. “Sometimes songs are just songs, Turbo. Not all of them are about you.”

“Sure they are.”

She sighed, electing to drop it. “Okay, so, you’re tellin’ me that if I never said anything, you wouldn’t either?”

“Yeah, why not? I’ve got a pretty good track record.”

“Oh yeah?” she raised a brow. “Just how good?”

“Hm?”

“Just how long have you been makin’ the conscious decision not to say--” she paused, “--it to me?”

“Uhh,” his eyes looked away, as he suddenly looked put on the spot. “Well-- I’d say-- Prooobably… that time I walked into your woods, and I caught you, uh, singin’ that song about-- y’know, the one about your dreams ‘n crap. And y’were painting all these, like, ribbons of light, ‘n firecrackers, and all that--”

“Wait,” she tapped him with the back of her hand, “don’t bullcrit me. That was, like, years ago. We barely knew each other.”

Turbo’s jaw slid a bit, and he shrugged, still not quite looking at her. “Yeah,” he said casually. “I know.”

Heart suddenly pounding, Mavis just turned her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh,” she said sheepishly, her ears hot.

She heard him breathe a chuckle. “Mm-hmm.”

“And you really-- I mean,” she looked at him, “you’re seriously tellin’ me ya went this long without sayin’ anything? What were ya so afraid of?”

“I wasn’t afraid,” he protested. “I was smart. I saw you tellin’ sprites that ya needed some space just ‘cause they said your hair looked nice that day. I knew that if I said anythin’, anythin’ at all, it’d scare you off.”

Mavis pressed her mouth into a line, and smacked her tongue. “Yep. Yep, it would’ve.”

“Exactly. Besides,” he shrugged, “I liked things the way they were. Didn’t want anythin’ to change.”

Memories resurfaced, and Mavis suddenly felt sort of awkward for having that same internal debate over friendship while he was actually in love with her. Of course, the amount of years she spent in denial was impressive. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I get that.”

“And what about you?” he asked, smirking. “When did you know?”

“Oh--” she jumped a bit, “oh-- no, I’m-- Now I’m embarrassed to say…”

Turbo laughed and shoved her hip just a bit. “I told, so you gotta.”

“Mm,” Mavis pinched her brow and rubbed it a bit, letting her words ride out on a rough sigh, “it was actually-- it was the night before you, uh… left.”

Ever so slightly, Turbo shrunk away from her. “O-oh…”

“Yeah, but--” she dropped her hand, desperately trying to bandage up the situation, “I mean, that was just when I realized. It had been goin’ on for way longer, but I’m-- I’m like, emotionally illiterate--”

“Oh, no, I know that,” he told her. “Pretty sure I knew how you felt even before you did.”

“Oh, well… good?”

“It’s just that-- I mean, that’s…” he flashed a sort of pained, small smile, “that’s just real bad timing, huh, Mav?”

Her spirits sank a bit, and she tapped a finger against her belly. “...Yeah. Big time,” she said, leading into a sigh. “I, uh… I should’a told you right then ‘n there. I spent so long afterward thinkin’, like… would it have made a difference at all, if I had? Even a bit?”

“...Mav, uh…” Turbo began, sadness creeping into his voice as he dropped to lie on his side again, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… I kinda feel like it wouldn’t have changed anything. I don’t even know… how I’d have taken it. I’m still tryin’ to make sense of everything, but… I knew how you felt. And I already had so many great things in my life. Those-- Those posers just got into my head, and I--... Well, I guess I wanted to protect all those great things. Y’can see just how well that worked out.”

Mavis looked at him while a sad sort of relief settled upon her, some closure for a long-held anxiety. She lifted her hand just to slightly brush a knuckle against his jaw. "I'm not offended," she told him. "I mostly worked through that worry anyway. I mean… what difference does it make? You're back now. Things are real different, but… at least you're alive."

He half-smiled, briefly.

She continued, "That's just the thing, though. While you were gone, I was just constantly regretting not telling you everything when I had the chance to do it. I came up with so many things that I wished I'd said, and… then you came back. And it still took me this long to finally say something."

Turbo was quiet for a minute, a sadness in his eyes. "Yeah, well. I don't blame you."

Mavis also fell silent, unsure of what to say. Eventually, she managed quietly, "So… have you been in the same boat, then? While you were under the map, were there things you wished you'd said to me?"

She felt strangely selfish for hoping the answer would be yes.

"I mean…" Turbo muttered, his eyes downcast, "yeah, of course."

At first, Mavis felt a bittersweet warmth in her belly, but then Turbo continued. "It's just that…" he paused, seeming to choose his words carefully, "...even when I could see you, and even as I was trying to find a way out, I sorta thought, like… once I made it out, there'd be no point in saying anything, anyway."

Mavis blinked. "What's that mean?"

"Well, I--" he sighed. "I knew how it must have looked, me takin' off without a word. And, uh… I only saw whatever you did while you were outside, in your game. But I could see well enough to know you were goin' through a whole lotta garbage, and… it was all on me."

Mavis lifted her head, a bit taken aback. "What? No. No, T, you can't blame it all on yourself. I had a buff problem even before you left. You can't blame yourself for my dumbass ways of coping."

"But that's--"

"And the stuff you didn't see? Not your fault, either. You never forced anyone's hand. It was the fault of some real twisted, honestly evil sprites."

His face suddenly turned serious. "So, someone did do something to you."

Mavis bit back her words. She had revealed more than she wanted to.

"I'll delete them," he said coldly. "Honest to the Devs, I will kill whoever did it when I get back out there.”

"Don't bother," she groaned a bit. "That's all over and dealt with."

"I don't care."

"T, it's fine, okay? They didn't just get away with it."

He seemed to drop it, at least for a minute. When he spoke again, his voice had gone back to being heavy with regret. "Still," he said, "I bet they wouldn't have done what they did if I'd never done what I did."

Mavis did not know how to answer that.

"Yeah," Turbo said in response to her silence. "Can you really, honestly tell me that you never blamed me for anything that happened to you?"

Still at a loss, she looked back to the ceiling. "No," she sighed. "But I've moved past that now."

"Mm, I can't say I believe you," he said, his voice a bit unsteady. "Mav, I think you probably know that I'd rather show than tell."

"I do," she nodded. "I'm the same way."

"So then, you'll get it when I say that puttin' someone through all the crap I put you through is a pretty piss-poor way to show you care about them. So how could I rightfully just pop up and say that I do? Even if I did, I figured you'd never believe me, and why should you?"

There was a hard pang in Mavis' chest as she looked at him. She had no idea he felt that way, and she could feel her heart break for him just a bit. "Do you still believe that? Do you think I wouldn't believe you, even now?"

Turbo avoided her gaze, instead looking down at his pillow. He said nothing.

Quietly, honestly, she asked, "Is that why you haven't said it back?"

Turbo did not look at her, his voice slow and miserable. "What have I done to make up for all that? How can I just say--"

"Turbo," she said sharply, but not angrily. "No. No. Just stop with that, okay? You think I wouldn't believe you? Turbo, you know I'd never waste my time with a sprite if I thought they didn't care about me, too. I'm not stupid. I know you're not foolin' me. And you've gone this long without sayin' it, but I've still stuck around because you've shown me how you feel. You've trusted me with stuff I know you wouldn't show anyone else. You've asked me for help. You've been vulnerable with me. Turbo, I've seen you cry. If I wasn't special, I'd have never seen any of that, and that's a fact. You keep talkin' like I wouldn't believe you, but you gotta be willin' to believe me when I say I do. Trust me with that. Please."

He was looking down. "I… just… don't know how you can say you love me… after what I did. After whatever you went through because of me. While you're still wakin' up screaming and crying. How does anyone forgive something like that?"

Mavis took a moment to think. She had an idea that sent her heart pounding, but she could not stand sitting back while he was in so much pain. She would have to open up to him in one of the most intimate ways she had ever attempted. She could only hope that it would not do more harm than good. There just seemed little else she could do.

"Turbo…" she began, her throat dry, "Do you really wanna know what happened?"

She heard his breathing pick up just a bit. "Yeah," he breathed. "I really do."

She swallowed. "Then… Well, listen. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I tried to just tell you. But… I actually, uh… wrote it all down."

"Wh--" Turbo propped up just the tiniest bit. "Really?"

"Yeah. It was, like…" she felt her face heat up, "kind of… how I dealt with things. Eventually. It was sort of a journal, but like… I tried to make it feel like I was writing letters to you. It was the closest I could get to saying everything I wanted to say."

Turbo just seemed stunned as he took in that information. She could tell he had mixed feelings. Sort of sad, sort of touched, and sort of hopeful over the prospect of reading it.

Looking at him, Mavis took a deep breath. "I want you to read it," she said, "so you'll understand. But I gotta warn you… it is seriously not pretty at parts. And I don't always say the nicest things about you."

"That's--" he swallowed. "That's okay. I can deal. I asked for the truth, not a bedtime story."

"Well… it's all in there. Everything. The whole truth. If that's something you can handle--"

"It is."

"...Okay. Tomorrow, I'll go back to my game and find the book. And I'll bring it to you. You can read it alone, or… I can stick around. Either way, you'll know everything. And… there are parts of that story that I want you to read when you ever have doubts about how I feel. You'll see. And you'll understand how the fact that I'm still here with you after all that should be proof enough that I forgive you."

"Wow, uh…" Turbo said slowly, "That's… Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said. "But this is a really big deal to me. Don't forget that."

"I won't," he agreed.

“Tomorrow,” she said, lifting her pinky finger to him again. “Promise.”

And again, he hooked his pinky over hers, nodding slightly. “Okay. I’ll be ready for it.”

It seemed to Mavis, just then, that she had said all she needed to. There was no further point in fumbling over her words, not when he was going to read them so soon anyway. Nerves twisted around in her belly over that fact, and she tried to ignore them. She knew it would be the most efficient and accurate way to tell him the truth about what happened, something he seemed to need so desperately. She could not entertain any nervousness over it, or she might have changed her mind.

"Well…" she began, looking at their hands, "I guess that's that. I'll let you sleep, for real this time." She pulled his hand closer to place a small kiss on his knuckle before letting go. Once again, she rolled to face the back of the couch, away from him. "G'night, T."

For a moment, there was just stillness behind her. Then there was a tentative, warm hand on her waist. Turbo left it there, gently fidgeting, worrying the fabric of her shirt between his fingers. “I don’t feel like sleeping,” he muttered, barely above a whisper.

“...Yeah,” she sighed quietly. “Me neither.”

The hand on her waist then slowly ran up her body as Turbo squirmed closer, and she felt his warmth press right up against her back. The arm that was now draped over her ribs gently but purposefully held her against him. Mavis welcomed the close contact. In fact, it seemed to feel even better than usual, and even though it was nothing they had not done before, it strangely woke a few butterflies in her ribcage.

Shaking just a bit, but still running with it, Mavis snaked her hand up Turbo’s arm until she laced her fingers over the back of his, pulling his arm up even tighter against her chest. The bridge of his nose rested against the back of her head, and she could feel his breath blowing softly through her hair. They remained that way for a little while, molded to the shape of each other, saying nothing.

That is, until Mavis had had enough time to think. Even with anxiety over the book thumping hard in her chest, she somehow felt so light, like she had let go of a weight she did not know she had been carrying. It was then that it began to really sink in just how significant it was for her to be able to express love openly and freely, in such a simple way. It took no selfless deeds, no grand gestures. Just a few words.

She never expected it to be such a beautiful feeling. She had the urge to share just a little bit more to test herself, and decided to wing it. That seemed to work out earlier.

“Y’know, T…” she muttered.

His head moved just a bit.

“I… didn’t say it just so you would say it back. I totally get why it might be hard. I wish y’didn’t feel like such trash, and I’m gonna change your mind on that. But even if you never feel up to sayin’ it, y’know… that’s fine. Y’don’t have to. I already know.”

No response.

“I just… want you to know… that was the first time in my life that I’d ever told anyone I loved them,” her voice dropped into a deep sort of softness, and she squeezed his hand. “And… T… I’m really glad it was to you.”

Turbo was still quiet, but for a moment, she did not feel his breath in her hair.

After receiving no response, Mavis merely ducked her head a bit. She tried to believe that she was not disappointed at all. Even though it was hard, she truly did feel that it was worth it to say, even with no reciprocation. It was her own feelings that she was out to express, and she felt better for it. That alone was amazing to her.

So amazing, in fact, that she felt the need to say it just one more time.

Slowly, just loud enough for him to hear, she said, “I love you so much.”

Just then, the arm around her tightened slowly, to the point that it almost hurt. Turbo’s head nuzzled just under the slope of her neck as he buried his face, and she felt his knees bending up a bit on the back of her thighs. It seemed as if he would have completely curled around her like a cat if he were big enough. She felt his breath on her skin when he spoke, his rough voice suddenly so fragile, as if it were right on the edge of breaking.

“I love you, too.”

It was Mavis’ turn to be left breathless. She froze, the words echoing loudly in her head. They stirred up an old anxiety, one that once had taken such deep, vicious roots in her brain, but had since been reduced to a small, weak sapling. The time to truly face it head-on had arrived, and for a moment, the scars left by the old roots burned. But when it came down to it, the old fear had no hold anymore, and just as easy as ripping thin, dead roots from the earth, she moved past it.

And that freedom, that victory, it exploded in her chest like a popping firecracker. He loved her, and finally, she was not afraid to let him. It was too much to take in. Against her will, she was grinning. She even found herself crying just a bit, but silently, gratefully.

When she sniffed a bit, however, Turbo perked up. He propped himself up on one elbow to look at her, and she looked back over her shoulder a bit, still smiling.

“Uh,” Turbo paused, looking a bit thrown off by the smile. “Are you--...”

To his credit, Mavis was not sure what the protocol was for happy tears, either. Ignoring them seemed correct. She twisted around to lie on her back again, and her smile twitched into her cheek. “Look at that, T,” she half-chuckled, “y’didn’t scare me off.”

It took him a second, but he breathed a short laugh through a grin that flashed his pointed teeth. “Yeah,” he said lowly, “how ‘bout that, huh? Good thing I waited ‘til you weren’t such a scaredy-cat.”

Mavis scoffed just a bit. “Scaredy-cat? This comin’ from a guy who did, in fact, take four-ish years to tell the girl he liked how he felt.”

“Oh, c’mon,” he rolled his eyes slightly, “I wasn’t scared--”

“Of me leaving?” she interjected carefully.

Turbo paused, just looking at her with depths of thought toiling behind his eyes. She returned the gaze steadily. An old conversation, one she had dreamed about so often, she could nearly recite it by memory, came into her mind. She knew the nail, and she hit it on the head… as gently as one could.

“‘Cause I’m not going to,” she muttered. “Just… keep remembering that. Okay?”

He took another moment to look at her, sort of studying her face. Then he pulled himself up a bit higher to reach an arm across her body and prop himself up so his face loomed above hers. A smile pulled into his cheek a bit. “So, you’re tellin’ me that I’m stuck with you, Make-it?”

Mavis smiled right back, a small laugh escaping her lips. She paused for just a second, sort of distracted by how she could see the deep, dark red irises in Turbo’s eyes. Blinking, she said, “That’s right. Does this mean you believe me on that, now?”

With a click of the tongue, he shook his head just once. “Nah, Mav,” he muttered, lowering just enough for their foreheads to touch. “It hasn’t been forever, yet.”

She chuckled warmly, her voice colored with adoration. Her heart was just about reaching its threshold, and she did not know just what would happen if she let it overflow. In any case, she had done quite enough crying that night, and did not intend to do more.

At last, she felt she could fully surrender, and give into just how badly she wanted him close, and even closer. Her hands rose up behind his ears, and he met her intention halfway, dropping right in to kiss her. A heavy, contented sigh blew through her nose. Lacing her fingers in his hair, she fell into motion with him, melting into this kiss that somehow felt so needed, so healing. His hand playing with the hair on the top of her head, his other hand lightly stroking her belly -- It all seemed the same as usual. But the feeling seemed to take on a new shimmer, one that just accentuated the beauty of it. Everything that was already wonderful somehow felt so much better. Maybe voicing their love had changed things, but from the incredible warmth glowing in Mavis’ chest, she knew the changes were for the better.

As the kiss began to deepen, and her hands began to run over his back, obsessed with the shape of him, and the pressure of Turbo’s hand roaming over her ribs began to grow, Mavis felt it safe to say that neither of them would be getting to sleep very soon.

But when they did, she thought, it might finally be her chance to have a good dream.

#this is BIG TIME mushy and sweet #luv my babies #fanfiction #the shitgoblins #make it mavis #turbo #main timeline

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thejamesoldier · 5 years

Text

A Single Frayed Rope

AO3 Link :)

Prologue

A/N: So Arthur's got his own horse (of course not poor Boadicea) like the other gang members do and not that Tennessee Walker pinto you get in the start of the game bc reasons and artistic license :)))))))

Chapter 1 ~ Colter I

The Northwestern Peaks of Grizzlies East, Ambarino ~ Unknown Date

You know for sure you're dreaming this time.

Blue clear skies reign above you, a mountain sleeps below you, and green grass rolls gently over the steep rock inclines on either side of you. Wildflowers humbly greet the sun as dawn breaks the fasting cold of night, life slowly awakening as light hushes into the world. An eagle soars a few leagues above you, great wings flapping as it lowers itself with its talons extended to a rock that sits behind what looks to be a, a simple grave.

Something draws you forward, a single rope tying you irrevocably to whatever lies in the distance -- whatever is on the other end. You pick your way slowly across the uneven terrain as sweeping curtains of warmth brought by the proud dawn part before you. Despite the sun tingling against your skin, you hold yourself tight to brace against the stubborn morning chill nipping at your heels like loyal hounds, urging you to move faster towards the inevitable. There's a silence that settles around you then, broken only by the sound of your footsteps that crunch against the gravel as you walk. You stop a respectful foot in front of the humble resting place unsure of what to do but strangely not questioning why you're here. Flowers the exact color of sunset are planted in a thoughtful cluster around an erected cross, a circle of wood rounding atop all three protruding ends of the cross distinguishes it from a normal grave. A sentence is carved there while a name is displayed on the horizontal center plank.

"Arthur Morgan," You whisper softly after a moment, reading the name carefully but lovingly etched into the fresh wood. The name feels foreign on your tongue but none the less it yanks on that rope anchored deep in your chest.

Before you can read the rest of the epitaph the eagle takes off with a cry as the wind picks up suddenly, startling your gaze away from the grave. The wind doesn't gust into you as you expect it to by the swift way it lifts the eagle high into the sky. Instead it sings, harmonizes with itself, as it banks against the mountain face behind you after dragging chilled fingers along your cheeks. Its as if speaking the name of the man who rests here evoked something within the surrounding nature, the moment feels sacred somehow, and in the distance you notice a stag -- proud head lifted high as it faces you. He's about a mile off, standing in a large green valley that rests just after the mountain's sheer incline gentles into sloping hills. A thick heavy morning fog curls about his hooves, the sun barely reaching him as it crawls slowly over the jagged line of the horizon and glows softly within the frame of his antlers -- a phantom of strength and beauty. Even after you meet his gaze and hold it, exposed and stripped of everything material, the great beast remains unshaken.

Maybe this isn't a dream.

Maybe it isn't dawn but its dusk.

And maybe...maybe this is a memory.

A Glacier Northwest of Colter ~ May, 1899

Arthur doesn't understand what he's seeing at first.

Javier gives pause beside him too as they spot John and then notice the curled up form beside him. They both sway slightly on their feet when they eventually work out its a naked unconscious woman. Arthur's body jolts him forward on its own in order to begin working his way down to get her -- John, to get them both. John doesn't even seem like he knows she's there as he calls for Arthur in that raspy familiar voice of his, the sound of it reopening a wound deep in Arthur's chest that he's been constantly attempting to repair ever since John returned to the gang.

He left us.

Arthur clenches his jaw as he approaches him, shoving the hurt away as violently as he can even though he knows it'll float back up through his subconsciousness and haunt him later. Worry, of all things, takes his sorrow's place as he really assess John's condition. But as soon as John meets his eye, spirit nearly broken as his body is, Arthur feels his familiar wall of anger spring up around him at the vulnerability, swiftly separating him from the world, a veil against his reality -- his coping mechanism polished and efficient from years of use against pain and loss. Arthur offers John a few clipped words of comfort as he bends to collect John's nearly frozen body. Its not until he heaves him -- albeit a little more roughly than necessary -- up over his shoulder and starts to pass him to Javier to carry out of the small sunken ditch they're in, that John even acknowledges the woman lying a few feet away.

"The girl, the woman-n A-Arthur, the woman, she ain't dead, t-take her too." John gets out through his violently chattering teeth.

Arthur doesn't quite know how to respond to that as he was already planing to take her with them so he doesn't, just wordlessly bends down and gently pitches the woman up into his arms, trying to avoid looking at her nakedness as he does so.

How the hell did a woman end up running about on a frozen mountain alone and naked, of all things?

Putting her over his shoulder didn't feel right, made her seem too much like a corpse, so instead Arthur carries her bridal style and holds her as close to his chest as he can as he minds his footing while navigating his way off the ledge to higher more solid ground.

Once they reach their mounts Arthur speaks over the wind that's starting to pick up again,

"Marston! Where did she come from?"

John winces as he gingerly adjusts himself behind Javier on the back of Boaz,

"Dunno, I was r-runnin' from them wolv-ves and we kind of found each other. T-Took to the high cliffs to escape."

Arthur only grunts in response as he struggles to loosen his saddle enough to pull the wool blanket that served as a saddle pad out from underneath the leather seat. Once he's wiggled it free he quickly covers the limp woman in his arms with it, hoping the heat from the worked horse settled deep in the fabric would help her thaw or at least stop her from losing any limbs if she hadn't lost them to hypothermia already. He lifts her up onto his mare Sabine after re-tightening the saddle, hushing at her when she nickers in protest at the loss of her blanket, before mounting up himself. Arthur's fingers shake with the cold as he unbuttons his thick layers of coats and pulls the woman tight against his chest. He does his best trying to button the both of you in together, forcing the stiff worn fabrics to stretch.

"Why the hell is she naked?" Javier asks, since no one else was willing to, as he turns Boaz in a direction that looks like it holds the safest path back to camp.

John shrugs only to instantly regret moving, the deep open wounds on his face pulling themselves wider as he lets out a shout of pain.

"Let's just get back to camp and ask questions later," Arthur orders as he positions the woman's body to curl in to him, hooking her legs over to one side of the horse and guiding her head to rest in the pocket of warmth between the side of his neck and the thick fur of his coat's flipped up collar. Any of her skin that isn't covered by his coat Arthur tucks the saddle pad around.

He pushes aside all sense of propriety as he feels Javier and John watching him maneuver her as they wait -- not judging Arthur, just uneasy with the overall absurdity of the situation. Every inch of her is pressed against him, uncomfortably so, in favor of making sure she doesn't die. He knows bare skin against bare skin is the most efficient way to share body heat, he knows this is a life or death situation going by the fact that she's starting to chill Arthur to the bone with how cold she is. The severity of her condition helps him ignore his bashfulness and follow Javier's lead with his head high as he guides the small group back to camp.

Arthur promises himself he can be embarrassed and furious about all this later.

Colter ~ May, 1899

The first thing you register is the absence of the cold. It's strange because you had grown so used to it, you felt oddly naked without it.

And that becomes the second thing you register: course fabric against your skin.

You slowly stir yourself into consciousnesses, feeling like you have molasses in your veins and a heavy stone for a brain. Your body protests sharply though as you attempt to sit up once you understand you're in fact alive and no longer freezing. The pain is a deep stabbing ache that seems to have no origin but just exists in every cell of your body, and it bullies you back into stillness. Once your suffering ebbs a touch, your other senses take over.

"Is the lost lady waking up?" A small nervous voice asks, a child.

"Dunno Jack, but if she does she's in enough pain that I reckon she couldn't hurt us even if she tried." A responding voice hushes, tone firm but comforting and intimate. The mother.

"Okay."

You keep your eyes closed at that, thinking maybe you should pretend to be asleep a little longer (and you don't think your eyes could handle any form of light right now anyways). Your head throbs as being awake starts to prove to be painful and exhausting, your tongue lies heavy and dry in your mouth, and you agree with the woman -- your limbs feel like lead, so heavy you don't think you could lift your pinky finger.

Weak, you feel so weak.

And with that thought you're pulled back under the dark surf of unconsciousness.

"Dutch, Dutch we got a lot of folk to feed now," A man's worried voice accompanied by a door banging open yanks you out the grey fray you were lost in, "If you keep savin' lost souls and taking hostages then we gotta act accordingly. We're responsible for them now and we gotta take care of everyone else! We can't do that if you go gallivanting off with the strongest in our gang robbin' trains and shootin' up O'Driscolls!"

"Hosea I don't know what to tell you, I've said this a hundred times, we'll be fine. We always are. We made it back alright from that O'Driscoll camp, and we will make it back from this train robbery in tact and that much richer. We need this money. How are we gonna move everyone to a safe place without cash?"

"We at least need to leave the goddamned snow, Dutch! Once we get to country that's inhabited by people then we can think about a big take, but right now food and not freezin' to death are our main concerns."

"Arthur and Charles found us some food, we'll be fine --,"

"No we are not fine. The two stags, both of which were starving too by the way, aren't going to last us. Arthur and Javier brought back John and a half-dead woman who we know nothing about, and then on top of that you found poor Mrs. Adler and now another O'Driscoll! Christ alive Dutch, half of us are dyin' we can't afford to risk --,"

"Hosea," The sound of hands grasping shoulders fills the pause between the man's words, "Hosea have faith in me, trust me to get us all out of this alive."

Silence reigns then. You figure you're in a small room by the way their voices don't carry too far in the space. Wind howls outside, banging on doors and rattling windows fighting to get in. The confusion that hits you once you really catch on to their conversation alarms you so severely you begin to shake.

Gangs?

Shooting?

Robbing?

What the fuck is going on? Where are you? Who in Gods name are these people?

"I trust you Dutch, you know that, but think about this, please, for me. Think about all the people that need to be the priority right now, Colm will still be there, trains and coaches and rich people to rob will still be there, but John might not make it, the woman with him who was naked mind you and already half dead when they found her will probably not make it, Mrs. Adler might not make it. Davey died, Dutch. Jenny is dead. We've got family missin' too, Mac and Sean --,"

"You don't have to remind me Hosea!"

"Okay, I know, but we gotta think about them and who is left. We gotta put the gang first, and ridin' out like this isn't going to help or save anyone."

"I've, I've made up my mind Hosea. This money is what we need, it will help us be comfortable once we've left the mountains."

"Dutch there are other ways to help, I know you're desperate to do something -- anything that's useful, but this isn't the way to go about it --,"

"It's too good a chance to miss and I'm taking the risk."

"Dutch!"

The door bangs open again and the two pairs of angry footsteps leave. The wind bursts in as they exit and lathers you with its icy breath, making you shake harder as the door closes and leaves you alone with the cold and a growing sense of unfathomable fear. With more effort than it should take, you finally open your eyes, your lids sticking a bit as your irises protest even in the dim lighting of the room. Once you're able to take in your surroundings your panic only increases.

A bare wooden cabin that looks like it could be blown over if the wind pushed a hair harder turns out to be the room you've been in, a pathetic fire struggles in a fireplace with strips of cloth, twigs, and stray handfuls of hay to serve as its logs in the corner nearest to you. You're laying on a cot of some sort with no blankets, just the fabric of your clothes to shield you from the cold seeping through the generous cracks in the wood-plank walls. You finally sit up after four separate attempts once you realize you're alone. Your head swims with the change of position and your stomach gives a nauseating drop but you firmly ignore it as you try to quell the panic that's slowly inflating in your chest like an iron balloon, inch by inch it doesn't yield, growing steadily -- inevitably -- and stealing your sanity.

The urge to run spikes in your system, your flight instinct kicking in as savagely as it did when the wolves chased you.

You grunt as you make yourself stand, swaying dangerously on your feet you grip the splintering mantle of the fireplace to stop yourself from collapsing. Struggling to fight the buckling in your knees, you feel the adrenaline slowly feeding strength into your dead muscles, injecting you with empty energy causing you to shake and shiver like a crack addict but none the less giving you the push to get your body into motion. You stagger to the door and wait as you hear the sound of muted hooves thunder away, a small stampede charging the smirking maws of the mountains. When the voices left behind simmer down and everything seems quiet enough, you crack the door open an inch to get a look outside. You recoil almost immediately at the brightness of the sun reflecting off the blanket of snow covering everything. It takes your eyes a good ten minutes to adjust and for you to really get a sense of your situation.

No one seems to be out, though you know people are in the cabins that line both sides of what you assume is a street or main path in the center of this small cluster of sad buildings. Everything is dilapidated and falling apart, well tread paths clue you in to which buildings are most heavily inhabited. Horse hitching posts stand lonely and bare a bit ways down and your mind struggles to wrap its head around everything.

Where are the cars? The street lights? The telephone poles? Or any sign of genuine civilization?

You swallow against the bile that rises from the back of your throat as panic only suffocates you further. Its bare of people outside so you could probably sneak out, but how the hell are you supposed to survive out there in nature by yourself? Especially in your condition. It's not like you could make a phone call or steal someones cell phone as you spotted none in the room on the way to the door. It's not like you could escape by stealing a car, or a... a horse since that's what these people used instead of technology. Are you on some sort of farm? Is this a Mormon colony? Is there a driveway or garage further down the snow covered road you just couldn't see? All the questions swirling in your brain distract you so much that you don't hear the door that connects this room with the adjoining one open.

"You're awake,"

You startle and collapse to the floor as three people behind you raise their hands in surrender while you shake with your back against the wall. Its the man you nearly froze to death with, a woman, and a child -- a young boy.

"Woah okay, you're okay," The woman says in what sounds like a heavy southern accent, though it registers as slightly different from what you remember a southern accent sounding like. You can't put your finger on it.

The woman doesn't attempt to move closer to you as she is supporting the weight of the man, but she does push the boy who you assume to be her son behind her with her free hand. You just stare and shake, unable to do much else. Now that you're on the floor it seems impossible to try and get back up, like all the adrenaline you had before has now twisted into fear and its paralyzing you instead of helping you move. They're all dressed like they're straight out of a western film, or like they're part of some high budget reenactment. The theory that this is some sort of Mormon colony dissipates like smoke in the wind because you're pretty sure established Mormons don't wear tattered rags and live in poverty like this. This only adds to your confusion and mounting anxiety. It's not until you wrap your arms around your knees that you realize you're wearing almost the exact same thing the woman is, a dull coarse frock of some sort with a heavy shift and thick skirts.

"W-What," You croak out of your unused throat, beginning to hyperventilate.

Why are you also wearing old fashion clothing?

"Hey, okay you're okay, you're safe," The woman tries to emphasize gently like she's speaking to a wild animal, but you don't really hear her as your heart starts to beat too fast, your breath turns to ash in your lungs, blood rushes from your head, your ears start to ring, and all sense of reality slips from you.

"Poor thing," Abigail murmurs, glancing over at the woman in the cot adjacent to John's while she unwraps the bandages on John's face.

Abigail had moved her with the help of Miss Grimshaw back to her cot after she blacked out on the floor.

John stays silent but does look over at the stranger too. The wild desperation he saw in her eyes the first time he met her on that mountain had morphed into a kind of savage panic. He feels sorry for her as she lays there exhausted and weak and scared, and is reminded how lucky he is Abigail gives a damn about him. He couldn't imagine being alone right now, being as vulnerable as he is and being on his own. He never should have left Abigail and the gang -- never should have left his family.

"That would be me if it weren't for you," John finds himself whispering to Abigail, voice thick with rare emotion that echos out through the deep earthy brown of his eyes.

Admitting out loud that he needs her strips John down to a state of vulnerability he has never exposed to Abigail or anyone before. John knows how horrible Abigail and him are at telling each other how they feel, its endless guessing and fighting and passion and push and pull and sex and hate and give and take. This gentle moment between them is precious, and John knows Abigail recognizes this as she tenderly brushes some of his tangled matted hair away from the swollen scars on his face. Abigail avoids his gaze, afraid to shatter the moment -- afraid to scare John and this fragile intimacy away -- and only dabs gently at John's facial wounds with a cloth drenched with near frozen alcohol. A forcefully neutral expression strains her pretty features as the true weight of his words settle in her heart. John knows he is nowhere near forgiven but he's wanted, as painful as it is for her he knows she wants him. Wants him to love her in the way she deserves, wants him to love Jack, wants him to let her love him, wants him to be a good man...

"I like her." Jack offers offhandedly, breaking them out of the moment as he stares in his own little world at the sleeping stranger with that fearful curiosity of his.

John wants to say something to stomp out the magic in Jack's eyes, to erase the air of mystery around the woman, but he manages to bite his tongue. He hates when he has urges like that, urges to destroy everything that brings Abigail's boy some semblance of joy or wonder.

A good man? John thinks bitterly, the word good doesn't even exist in my vocabulary.

Returning from the successful train robbery should feel like a victory, feel good, but Arthur just can't manage to gather any ego under him as he spots Hosea talking fiercely with Dutch by one of the cabins. Hosea always knows when shit is going downhill, is the brain behind Dutch's colorful brawn, and when Hosea is worried its usually a good sign that everyone should be worried. Arthur had felt hesitant about the robbery job too, but he trusted that Dutch knew what he was doing. Hell he'd follow Dutch off a cliff if it was asked of him.

"That's it girl," Arthur murmurs at Sabine, his wild Hungarian Halfbred mare he managed to tame as the gang had been chased up into the mountains. He missed his Boadicea but this mare has an air about her, has so much fight in her he originally had thought she was a stallion. With a solid black coat that shines like polished onyx in the sun and a build that towers over everyone and everything -- even Bill's Adrennes, the majestic audacity of her stuns him almost everytime he looks at her.

Arthur guides his girl over to the hitching posts and stiffly dismounts, the cold making his muscles clamp up a bit. He brushes her as best he can with the saddle on still trying to get her used to him. He has to be really strict with her, has to really use his legs to get her to listen (especially in tense situations) since being heavy handed on the bit and tearing her mouth up would only enrage her, not encourage her to work with him. But he knows that once he's earned her trust and they both work out their special language of physical and verbal cues, that she'll make one hell of a partner in crime. Arthur sneaks her a stale oatcake he found at the bottom of a barrel Pearson had stashed in the makeshift kitchen, and pets her thick glorious neck as Dutch and Hosea's unintelligible arguing carries over the clearing to him. It sounds like its really starting to get heated and it makes Arthur's heart heavy. He sighs before giving Sabine one more rub behind her ear, getting a hard snort of attitude for his trouble, and heads toward the cabin he knew John and Abigail were holed up in.

You have been awake and pretending to be asleep for what feels like hours now and its due to the fact that you're terrified to face reality. You keep convincing yourself that if you listen in on one more conversation everything will finally make sense. But honestly, the more you eavesdrop the more confused you become.

"It sounds like Hosea is gonna try and move us soon, probably tomorrow since the storm has finally broke." The woman who tried to comfort you during your panic attack earlier -- the mother -- says earnestly. You've since learned that her name is Abigail.

"Well good, I never wanna be cold or see snow again for the rest of my life." The man who had almost froze to death with you replies, his name you discovered is John.

Their son (or at least Abigail's son, you weren't sure if John is the father; the two of them argue quite nastily about it whenever the boy sleeps), who you eventually figure out is named Jack, has been silent for awhile. Though when you hear a rustling of fabric -- small hands readjusting their grip in his mother's thick skirts to keep warm, you know he's still in the room.

The door is thrown open before Abigail can respond and you hope no one notices how sharply you flinch.

"Still alive there Marston?" Comes a new voice to accompany the freezing draft that's let in, one you don't recognize but still sounds familiar somehow.

"It'll take more than a couple of wolves and a snow storm to get me out of the picture." John immediately shoots back, tone defensive -- completely losing the softness it courted when speaking with Abigail.

"Yeah, I reckon you could find a simpler excuse to cut and run again than that."

"Arthur!" Abigail snaps and you realize that this isn't playful banter between friends, its a roomful of predators bearing their teeth at each other, "I will not have you speak of that again!"

"My apologies Abigail, I just haven't forgiven the fool as quickly as you have."

"He is a fool you're right but he's my fool, he's Jack's fool, he's ours. And I'll have you remember he was your fool too once, you were brothers --,"

"Abigail stop!" John cuts her off in nearly a shout, the rough texture in his voice a sign that dangerous emotional territory was just breached.

Before anyone can say anything more though the door opens again.

"Everyone get packing, we're moving out tomorrow at first light!" It's a woman's voice, older -- a bit scratchy, kind of reminded you of a vulture's caw, "Miss Roberts you organize John and Jack's things, Arthur you come help me ready this woman for traveling."

"We're taking her with us? Has she even woken up yet?" The man you now know to be Arthur asks but doesn't argue.

"Unfortunately yes, Hosea and Dutch's orders. And I believe she's had bursts of consciousness so we'd be killin' her if we left her here."

"Doesn't Dutch think she's an O'Driscoll spy? Why would he want to keep any more of them rats alive, we already got one why keep another?"

"I don't know Mr. Morgan, if it was up to me I'd shoot them both and be done with it."

Your heart freezes over as you realize with mounting horror that they are talking about you.

A spy? What the actual fuck?

You petrify with fear as two pairs of footsteps, one quick and determined and the other heavy with intent and the promise of violence, approaches you. If you woke up now it would be obvious that you were listening in and it would make them trust you even less than they apparently already did. Who automatically assumed a naked lost woman on a frozen mountaintop was a spy? Who were these people?

"If you wouldn't mind moving her to the ground while I take apart this cot that would be a great help Mr. Morgan."

"Why do we need the cot?"

"Bill wants it. Says he can use it to torture the two O'Driscolls on when we get to warmer country."

Your blood runs cold at that before solidifying into ice as big hands grab you, manhandling you like you are a cheap rag doll, and hauling you up into the air. You force yourself to remain limp in his arms as he holds you bridal style, trying not to cower and flinch as you're not so gently adjusted in this man's grip. You're ready to be lowered back down again presumably on the floor but you remain firmly in Arthur's arms. But this does little to pull you from your worries.

Now they're talking about torture?

You hadn't thought your terror could get any worse but you were oh so wrong.

While Arthur is warm, a great furnace wrapped in what feels like thick coats, it does nothing to comfort you. In fact tears line your closed eyelids and slip out of the corners of your lashes. The physicality of being in the arms of someone who wanted -- or at least didn't care if you were tortured, left here in the cold, or died made everything too real. Made the fear that has plagued you since you woke in that silent forest naked and alone crumble what little control you had maintained in the mock safety of the Marston family cabin.

"She's shakin'," You hear Arthur murmur under his breath, tone as deep and vast as the bottom of the sea, sounding like he hadn't meant to speak out loud. Then deliberately, "She's shakin' and cryin'," And when that doesn't get him a response, "Miss Grimshaw?"

He sounds unsure, edging on panic ironically enough. Probably just ready to be rid of the discomfort your display of manifested terror is giving him.

"She'll be fine Mr. Morgan, she's just weak is all. It's better this way anyway, we'll get more outta her faster when she comes to enough to interrogate."

"She seemed real scared when she was awake," Abigail intercedes from what sounds like the opposite side of the room, "I don't think she's a spy."

"Well then if she's not a spy for the O'Driscolls then she is most definitely one of their whores." Arthur tightens his grip on you at this, "Who runs around as naked as the day they were born like that? There was probably an O'Driscoll camp near by," There's a short sound of hollow metal being dragged across the floor, "And she wandered too far away. There is no one else living up here, where else would she have come from?"

John mumbles something about you then but you don't hear it as you spiral yet again into another full fledged panic attack.

"She's really breathin' hard are you sure she's alright?" Arthur says with a quality of alarm in his voice you don't have the mental capacity to analyze right now.

"Mr. Morgan I really don't understand why you're so bothered, let her suffer, easier to break her when she wakes." There is a tense pause, the sound of rusted metal joints dislocating and folding, then, "Alright, toss her on the floor there. We'll move her to the cart that will be carrying the other O'Driscoll in the morning."

You can't help but tense a little as Arthur starts to shift under you, but instead of tossing you to the floor as this Miss Grimshaw had suggested, Arthur sets you down with thundering gentleness. It shocks you so much that it brings you out of your panic for a second, wrenches you so swiftly from what you believe your reality to be. Your chest heaves out a sob as your head, cradled like fractured glass in his wide calloused palms, is laid carefully down atop the worn wood of the floorboards after the rest of your body has been transferred from his arms. His fingers linger a second on either side of your face near the cliffs of your jaw, and it makes you sob again. He withdraws all touch from you at the sound like you had burned him, like he thought he might be the reason for your pain. And in a way he is, but largely the universe is at fault.

Time traveling is not of mortal grace, something Greater is to blame for this. Since you don't know what or who is responsible, you curse them all, curse everything you can think of. Because as you sob and shiver on the floor in some cabin in the middle of nowhere surrounded by dangerous strangers in a time you have slowly come to realize is not your own, you arrive at the notion that survival is least likely. But damn it all, you will survive. Out of spite you will survive. And heaven help the force that tries to keep you from success.

It's the middle of the night and the people in your cabin -- John, Abigail, and Jack -- are all asleep trying to get some rest before traveling tomorrow. You manage to find a full waterskin by a few other pouches in front of the fireplace, and you down the entire thing in one go, not realizing how thirsty you were. The next thing you scavenge for in the dark room is food. Sick and tired of feeling like you'll collapse any second you silently grab one of the pouches and find that inside is what you assume is the leftover salted venison you over heard the men called Dutch and Hosea arguing about a day or so earlier. You're not sure how long you were under after passing out on the mountain, but judging by the weakness in your body more than long enough. You recoil at the taste of the jerky but gnaw at it anyway, giving up on chewing it half through and just swallowing it whole out of desperation to nourish yourself.

You're a bit shocked you haven't woken the small family (if that's what you could call them) yet, but you don't question your luck as you move as quietly as your uncoordinated body will allow after being still for so long. You scan the black night once you crack the door open enough to get a good look and struggle to see anything. After a few minutes of letting your eyes adjust you spot a row of horses hitched to posts farther down across the main road. They're huddled together for warmth, a few blankets thrown over their backs to protect from the cold. There's only one that is saddled though, its a giant black horse that seems to be the most awake too. It's odd that its saddled but again, you don't question your luck you just hope its a snowball effect and things will just keep working in your favor. It's the least you're owed for the level of fuckery you've had to endure these past few days.

You wait another beat before slipping out as quietly as possible and streaking across the path to the horses. All the rest seem to ignore you except the saddled black one that raises its great head and snorts a warning at you. To be fair you know close to nothing about horses but you do know that this one will definitely pitch a loud fit if you don't calm it down. You quickly come to the realization that you don't know how to calm a horse down and the momentum you were running on to escape wobbles dangerously under your feet. You want to cry in frustration and fear but your body is too dehydrated to produce actual tears, so instead your sinuses burn like Satan himself took up residence in your tearducts, stirring the headache you have been nursing these past few days into a full fledged migraine. Also even with the night so still, the chill in the air is deathly cold as it pierces right through your shift and skirts. With a growing sense of dread you know you won't last out there like this, whether you manage to steal a horse or not. You also don't know where you are and where to go if you did escape. Your plan disintegrates like cotton candy in warm water as you once again are slapped across the face by the reality of your situation: you are well and truly fucked and you are a prisoner with no hope of immediate escape.

You need to be smarter.

The intimidating black horse gives a harsh whinny as you slowly approach it. The saddlebags attached to its side look quite full and you figure are worth checking before retreating back inside. You know nothing about picking locks or what not, but you figure it might not hurt to snatch anything you could find that might provide you an out when you're inevitably treated like a spy or prisoner or worse starting tomorrow. You don't think you can get away with faking unconsciousness any longer. If the situation gets dire enough, anything be it hairpin or bottlecap could be the one thing keeping you alive. You'd watched enough of those survivalist shows to at least understand that.

"It's a yeet or be yeeted world, and I refuse to be the latter." You declare mostly to yourself but also to the horse that's started picking its front hooves up in mini rears and stomping them back into the snow, clearly pissed that you're not backing off.

Arthur concludes after a couple of beats that the woman had indeed spoken some form of English, but he can not for the sorry life of him derive any coherent meaning from what she just said. He watches her debate with herself in the middle of the dark courtyard, absolutely sure she is not an O'Driscoll spy. She had completely missed Arthur leaning against the wall just inside the makeshift kitchen directly facing the posted horses. She stands not six feet from him and is totally unaware he's there.

Some spy.

Arthur has always liked night shifts when its his turn to take watch, and observing her trying to approach Sabine, who is seconds away from alerting the entire camp that something is wrong, is the most entertaining thing Arthur has witnessed in a long time. When he finally cops a glance at her profile in the hopes of gathering some clue as to what in God's name she thinks she's going to accomplish, he eventually puts together that she's apparently attempting to steal from his saddlebags. Arthur is dizzy with perplexsion and amusement as he watches her struggle to hush Sabine who's nickering louder and louder at her in warning, tossing her head and snorting hard through her nostrils as she paws the ground and flicks her tail -- all signs that a horse is about to teach you a goddamn lesson in personal space. The aggressive streak his mare has on top of the fact that she's green (freshly broke) and still wild in spirit only makes this situation worse, Arthur knows no amount of panicked shushing is going to get rid of that look in his girl's eye. He's tempted to let Sabine bite and or kick the shit out of the woman but something in the way she grapples for the buckles of his saddlebags -- frantic and desperate -- convinces Arthur to confront her instead of leaving her to the mercy of his mare.

"Ma'am," He says as he heaves himself out of his causal lean against the wall and steps out into the open, announcing his presence to her and trying to keep the curl in his voice that drips with his amusement neutral and intimidating instead.

The woman jumps like she's been struck by lightening, and before she's even turned all the way around to face him, an apology is ripping its way past her lips.

Yes no maybe so? Idk this chapter kind of came together in a weird way so forgive me if it kind of read weird too. Let me know what you think if you want to, or message me if you feel like freaking out over anything RDR2 related bc im so down and also I need to know that everyone else is suffering too bc arthur morgan deserved better :''''')

Chapter 2

Masterlist

#A Single Frayed Rope #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x fem!reader #arthur morgan x y/n #arthur morgan fanfic #rdr2 fanfic #angst #fluff #humor #eventual smut #my writing #mine #thejamesoldier #rdr2 #red dead 2

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tenyatrash · 5 years

Text

Foundations: EraserEdge

EraserEdge (Aizawa “Eraserhead” + Kamihara “Edgeshot) has been one of my favorite "what if" pairings since the Hideout Raid arc.

They're age appropriate for one another, they have similar values and a focus on not letting their emotions rule their actions, and they've got a beautiful aesthetic together. The more I thought about them, the better I thought they'd be as a couple. Since no one else has had the same idea (at least, in the tags I checked) I figured I should just be the change I want to see in the world and fill the tag myself.

Foundations is the baseline headcanon I have for their relationship with one another. I've already got all seven chapters outlined and I'm hoping that once I get this one fully fleshed-out, I'll have a good jumping off point for a more in-depth set of stories about my two ropey boys. Maybe someday other people will even join in and write about them.

Read it here or on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18536584/chapters/43934878

Chp 1: Advice

There’s incense in the air, and all at once he’s fifteen again, choking on ambition and bitterness as he claws his way into the famed Hero Course, body and mind thrumming with potential and pain. He’s made it, he’s done enough to get through.

It’s nothing like what he hoped.

He’s not sure if it’s the cynicism of age or if he felt this way, even then, but in his memories, his classmates are the biggest disappointment of all...immature children playing pretend. There’s potential, and friendship, and good times, he knows. But underneath it all is a persistent anxiousness that roils in his gut and warns him that he’s not doing enough.

That they’re not prepared.

The feeling follows him. It colors everything he sees, and keeps him awake at night, fitfully turning in bed or pummeling into himself at the gym. As he gets closer to his classmates, the feelings only intensify, the dread only grows. His emotions are consuming him in a silent paralysis that he can’t seem to escape.

Until he meets Kamihara-senpai.

Shinya’s older than him by two years, just about ready to take on the world as a bonafide Pro, and he’s everything Shouta hoped for when he first came to UA. He’s talented, he’s calm, and he’s never unprepared.

They meet in the gym one night, by chance, and it changes his life.

Shouta is wrapping his hands to stave off bleeding blisters, aching muscles protesting against another, unnecessary round of capture practice. It would work better with a partner or two, but he makes do with practice dummies and punching bags. Sensei already warned him against this kind of over-indulgence and it seemed his friends agree, so he’s left to train alone.

He’s not technically breaking the rules. He’s just...engaging in supplemental training, as befits a transfer from General Studies.

---

Shinya’s been at the traditional archery range, finding his center and striking his targets true long after the other students had called it a night. Shouta will later learn all about these little rituals, these pieces of history that Shinya clings to like a man out of time. But for now, they’re strangers. Two young men haunted by a drive that their classmates can’t seem to match, by a hunger that pursues them late into the night.

They’re the same, not that they know it, yet. Where Shouta is hungry-eyed and frenetic, Shinya is calm and deadly sure. Yet they’re both storms made flesh, two boys that know they have to strive or die-- one the swirling energy of a hurricane’s outer edge, the other the deceptive calm in the eye of a typhoon.

In the gym that night, they make landfall on one another’s shores.

---

Shouta’s hands flex against too-tight binding wraps, willing calluses to form. Shinya catches his eye from the shadows, looking like a ghost from another time. Shouta waits for the interloper to say something, but he doesn’t. Just watches like he’s making some kinda choice.

Shouta keeps going.

Naturally, that’s when Shinya starts to speak.

“Hand-to-hand isn’t your strong suit, huh?”

Shouta bristles at the comment.

“What?”

Shinya steps out of the shadows, letting his gym bag fall to the floor as he advances into the training circle.

“You’re unsuccessful because you’re too big.”

Shouta rolls his eyes. Clearly whoever this guy is, he’s here to take the piss, not help.

“What, exactly, about me is too big?”

He lazily waves a hand down his body, which is just short of average, both in height and weight. Given his family history, he doubts he’s ever going to be “too big” for anything.

Shinya waves off the erroneous inference.

“Not your body. Your movements. You still act like fighting is hard work. It’s only hard because you’re making it hard, over-exerting yourself with telegraphed moves and too-wide punches.”

“My fighting got me into the hero course.”

“Yeah, I saw. It was beautiful. But it’s enough to get you in, not to get you out and graduated and, you know...good.”

“Then show me.”

Shouta’s got plenty of bad qualities, he’s sure. But an over-abundance of pride has never been one of them. If the older kid has something worth learning, Shouta’s happy to listen. Shinya steps up to the bag and cocks his head, as if to make sure the underclassman is paying attention.

Shouta’s waiting for him to start already, and suddenly, he is. There’s no wind-up, hardly any sound.

One second, the grey-haired kid is staring at him, the next the bag is moving, jabs and punches and uppercuts building beating a rhythm across the surface while grey eyes stay impassive, breathing stays controlled.

The boy starts moving, feet seeming to glide across the sticky mat as he orbits the bag, adding in crosses and roundhouses with the same unbroken fluidity of those more basic punching patterns. It’s almost like he’s dancing, but the hits are landing strong. Shouta watches it all. He doesn’t understand where the power is coming from, how so much force is being created with so little movement, but he’s ready to learn.

There’s nothing quite like seeing a master at work, and before the end of the first minute, Shouta knows he wants to know everything this ghost is willing to teach him.

Eventually, the bag stills.

“Teach me.”

“Suit yourself. I’m Shinya Kamihara, by the way.”

“Shouta Aizawa...Yes, you’ll teach me? Just like that?”

“Just like that. After all, it’s the duty of older students to help younger ones, right?”

Shouta’s not so sure, based on what he’s seen so far. Sure, there are helpful people here, but there are just as many that jealously guard secrets and techniques, already planning how to climb over their classmates. How to become top heroes, as if selfishness should really be part of that at all.

Still, it’s nice that Kamihara-senpai seems willing to share. Shouta wants to be able to move like that. He wants to learn.

It’s elegant and efficient. Almost surgical in its fluidity, which is what he’s always wanted. He’s got no interest in being a blunt instrument, smashing walls and lighting up apartment blocks as cameras flash and blood pours. It sounds exhausting. He wants to be in and out and done before the first hunk of concrete falls, before the first reporter comes sniffing.

“Then, please teach me.”

Shouta climbs into a nearby sparring ring and listens to a soft chuckle as the older boy follows along, evidently not planning on the lessons starting so soon, but being a good sport about it anyway.

“Alright, then. Put your hands behind your back and grab your elbows.”

Shinya demonstrates the slightly-odd positioning and Shouta follows.

“Good. Stay that way. There’s no point in doing anything else until you master footwork and balance. I can tie your forearms if you need it, but it’s better if you can control yourself.”

Shouta is determined to control himself. Shinya shows him a run of three fighting patterns and Shouta wants to be offended at the simplicity. These are three-steps that he recognizes. Even General Studies kids get this. But when Shinya goes through them, it’s like he’s walking on water, and Shouta starts to realize that knowledge isn’t the same as mastery.

He keeps his mouth shut and wills his weight out of his heels and into the toes and balls of his feet. Practices over and over until he feels like he and Shinya are dancing in some strange ritual, until he can hear a non-existent beat in his mind and see the ripples of sound that slowly fade from his steps until he’s just a whisper covered by the rustling fabric of his gym clothes.

Shinya watches with a smile, mimicking every step in time as he watches the other learn to float.

Kid’s not half-bad.

Shinya calls an end to the lesson before Shouta’s ready to leave. It’ll become a feature of their relationship, Aizawa always looking to rush ahead, Kamihara always urging him to find a more sustainable pace.

They meet most nights, and even when they aren’t together, Aizawa is practicing forms and patterns in his room, on the stairs, in the streets on his way home late at night after everyone has already gone home. Up hills and through supermarket aisles, the shaggy-haired boy steps lightly to a beat that only he hears. He lets the fluidity enter his every movement, wills himself to float above the ground, only ever planting his feet when it’s time to land a hit. He separates his body and his mind from the weight of the world.

The other students notice. Shouta stops falling in practice, stops being easy to sweep when you catch him unawares. Teachers start to notice. Acrobatics start to weave themselves into his escape tactics. His capture weapon morphs from a lasso to a cloud of ribbon that only he can track and pull. No good hero can be a one trick pony, and Eraser’s not relying on his quirk and sheer will so much anymore. He’s smarter and smoother and harder to hit. He loses less. He gets hurt less. He starts to climb the ranks.

Shinya watches and smiles.

#bnha fanfiction #bnha rarepair #edgeshot #eraserhead #eraseredge #my writing #foundations

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